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Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Continuing our journey through the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder written by Dr. Michael Benton and published by Kingfisher books in 1992. The color illustrations are by Jim Channell and David Holmes, and line illustrations are by Kevin Maddison and Ralph Orme. As a few readers have mentioned, some of the illustrations were featured in Orbis Publishing's Dinosaurs magazine. I've previously experienced one of the massive compilations of that magazine and boy was it an adventure.

Anyway, look at that Oviraptor! Look at it!

As I said before, Ornithopods come off very badly in this book. This ugly-ass Parasaurolophus is a low point.

While it's nice to have a (not horizontal but still) bipedal Prosauropod, this is all I can see:

Is it me or is Pliohippus here downright sinister-looking? Like something horsey and unpleasant from Celtic folklore.

I'll admit part of my inordinate love for Therizinosaurs (or Segnosaurs) is based on the fact that nobody had any idea what to make of these guys for years. Freaky fish-guy Segnosaurus is one of my favorite largely forgotten paleoart memes, but in this book it takes a back-seat to this family tree:

Ahahaha, oh wow.

A fairly jolly-looking Styracosaurus, though he seems to have been drawn by someone who had only a vague idea of what the beast looked like.

Ah, Supersaurus. Again, this page pretty much speaks for itself.

And the Syntarsus illustration that led to me finding this book again. What's up, old buddy?

And finally, we'll end our journey with these... less than majestic-looking Tyrannosauruses. Those limbs...

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Sketch of the Day! I've given it some thought, and I have realized that of all the "You really had to be there" moments I've ever experienced on the Internet, Twitch Plays Pokemon is at least in the top five "You REALLY had to be there"-est. (We'll never forget you, Zexxy.)